BOOK REVIEW

Historicizing Samar: The Tree and the Forest
The Untold People’s History: Samar Philippines
Published by Sidelakes Press, 2004
205 pages

The Untold People’s History: Samar Philippines, it turns out, is not just about Samar: it is also about the Philippines. Santos and Lagos write about Samar in the context of the Philippines. Thus, the historic struggles of the Samarnons are intertwined with the Filipino people’s overall fight for national and social liberation. The particularities of the Samar condition are juxtaposed with the intricacies of the Philippine national situation.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

As I and a number of fellow journalists were unwinding from a clandestine press conference somewhere in the Cordilleras early this year, a TV cameraman who was with us broke into a rendition of the song “Tano,” which deals with a peasant who took to the hills as a way of confronting the social injustice that kept him in poverty even as he worked his head off daily.

We would learn later that he’s from Samar, a wound-shaped island southeast of Manila. In Samar, where peasants who comprise most of the population, are said to be fortunate if they could eat two meals a day, because they get so small a share of the land’s produce no thanks to the usurious landlord-tenant relations prevalent throughout the island.

I was thinking these as I was reading The Untold People’s History: Samar Philippines, a new book by Ricco Alejandro M. Santos and Bonifacio O. Lagos. The authors have an interesting take on the etymology of the island’s name: “The word ‘Samar’ is said to derive from samad, the Samarnon word for ‘wound.’ As the data and case studies in the book reveal, Samar is a land that continues to bleed from gaping and festering wounds of impoverishment and backwardness.”

The authors have managed to collect into this slim volume (205 pages) a comprehensive account of the past and present of Samar.

Not just about Samar

But later it turns out that the book is not just about Samar: it is also about the Philippines. Santos and Lagos write about Samar in the context of the Philippines. Thus, the historic struggles of the Samarnons are intertwined with the Filipino people’s overall fight for national and social liberation. The particularities of the Samar condition are juxtaposed with the intricacies of the Philippine national situation.

The first two chapters deal with Samar’s rich resources and its pre-colonial history, respectively. Readers who are not used to the highly detailed type of writing may find these chapters somewhat tedious, but they would no doubt realize the authors’ purpose.

The authors go into great detail on Samar’s resources to underscore the irony that here is an island teeming with such rich plant and animal life – an island with the country’s largest “unfragmented tract” of lowland tropical rainforest, 197 bird species 410 coral and 1,030 coral fish species – but is nevertheless one of the country’s poorest islands.

Santos and Lagos attribute the poverty of Samar, and the rest of the Philippines, to factors that are rooted way back in the colonial days.

This is where the relevance of the almost-clinical detail in the chapter on Samar’s pre-colonial past is unearthed.

Colonial historiographies have always justified colonialism as the practice of enlightened nations bringing civilization to the benighted ones.

Progress

By narrating in great detail the economic and cultural life of the Samarnons before the Spaniards came, Santos and Lagos show that Samar did not need colonialism to attain progress because it was relatively progressive even then and was on the road to further progress.

In the chapter on Samar’s history under Spanish colonization, the authors assume a more polemical tone, interspersed with narration. This tone remains through the chapters on the resistance to the Spanish occupation and Samar’s life under the American and Japanese occupations.

The authors directly debate with colonial historiography and provide extensive data, including those from the Census, to prove their assertion that colonialism actually impoverished Samar and the rest of the Philippines rather than bringing prosperity. They show that colonialism served to stunt the development of Samar and the rest of the Philippines, and was carried out merely to extract wealth from the country.

The authors, in the tradition of people’s historians like Renato Constantino, devote substantial parts of the book to the struggles of the masses against colonialism and imperialism – both in Samar and the rest of the Philippines. They cite the Sumuroy Revolt of 1649, the 1896 Revolution against Spanish colonialism, and the armed revolutionary struggles against American and Japanese imperialism.

Forest

Like the first two chapters, the last two are more Samar-centered than the middle parts. Still, they do not lose sight of the forest. Santos and Lagos cite the particularities of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions in Samar and relate these to the general situation in the country. They then devote a full chapter to the “radical ferment in the island,” discussed within the historical context of the Philippine national-democratic revolutionary movement with special emphasis on the underground Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).

As a whole, the book goes full circle. It starts from Samar, relates the nuances of its experience with the Philippine course, and returns focus on the island’s particularities.

For their parting words, Santos and Lagos have this to say:

“The history of Samar continues without let-up. It is a history of a people who once wrote their own history in pre-colonial times, but who since then, for over four centuries now, have been subjugated by foreign interests and local collaborators who have arrogated upon themselves the power to write it for Samar and for the Samarnon people.

“Today, the people are struggling to reverse this historical iniquity. They are moving to rewrite Samar’s history and future story with the glory and greatness it deserves. The challenge for Samarnons is to write the living history of Samar, while fully understanding the rich lessons the past and present have to offer.” Bulatlat

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